Garden Update

Well, I finally got some time to finish off the garden.

We planted potatoes about 3 weeks ago, and they had started to come up--Yay!!! I've never planted potatoes before, so I was concerned they might not grow.

I have felt that I needed to get some experience with growing a crop that could be stored for the winter.  This would provide us food that we didn't have to buy, and would also help us learn new things and be more self-sufficient.

Since it had been a few weeks since it was disked, I re-tilled the unsown part of the garden.  I have a tiller for one of my garden tractors-- a Dayton, and it made short work of the spot:

  

The next day I furrowed the spot with my White GT1650--it's too hard to remove the tiller and quickly swap things back and forth on the Dayton... plus it gives me one more tractor to have fun on!!

We planted three more rows of potatoes, including some Yukon Golds...similar to a Russet potato but with a yellow tint to the flesh of the potato.

We also planted Blue Guatemalan Banana Squash, Amish Crookneck (similar to Butternut, but with a long neck on them), Fordhook Acorns squash, and Silver Bell squash. Links to these plants are included towards the end of this article.

After putting in the squash, I furrowed the rows between the growing potato plants. As they grow, potatoes will form at the surface, and will "green" from exposure to the sun if you don't heap dirt around the base of the plant.

Many people don't know that potatoes, tomatoes, and egg plant are all members of the nightshade family. The leaves, roots (not tubers), stems, etc. contain the alkaloid solanine and are poisonous. Ditto for the actual "fruit" that grow on some potato plants. Green potatoes also contain solanine, and shouldn't be eaten... which makes me wonder why tomato caterpillars and Colorado Potato Beetles can get a way with eating them, but I digress...

More information on dangers of green potatoes:

Don't eat Green Potatoes

Anyway, here's a couple pictures of me furrowing.  

We intend to make a small "root cellar" area in our basement.

When I was a kid, there was an old house (actually more of a shack) down the street from me that had a root cellar behind it. Someone had lived in the house when we first moved in, but they moved not long after and the house later burned down.

I remember going into the old root cellar, with it's weather-beaten door half off the hinges, and seeing dusty wooden shelves with a few jars of fruit still on them. Even though it was mid-summer (high 90 degree temperatures), the root cellar was cool and comfortable.

Root cellars are how people kept food long term before the arrival of refrigerators and grocery stores stocked year round with fresh fruits and vegetables. You can store many different types of food in root cellars--potatoes, carrots, onions, winter squash, turnips, apples, etc. If done right, many things would last until late spring.

We had started putting our winter squash in cardboard boxes in a cool room in our basement.  We still have three smaller squash there as of this writing (late May) and they are still good. Now I wanted to expand on that a little, hence the potatoes in the garden.

In addition to storing the squash, we want to store the potatoes. We eat a lot of them and like them cooked in various ways--boiled with the skins on, fried, made into "Galloping" (Scalloped) potatoes, potato salad, etc. We planted 40 pounds of potatoes--a 10 to 1 yield is considered good... we'll see how we do.

Potatoes contain a lot of nutrition--a medium sized baked potato with the skin on has almost half the daily recommended amount of Vitamin C. They also contain other vitamins and helpful minerals. In fact, in rural Ireland in the mid 1800s, two-thirds of the people subsisted as sharecroppers and potatoes were their main food source. When potato blight destroyed the harvest for a couple of successive years, over a million people starved to death, and another million emigrated to other countries--particularly the U.S.

We also like squash, particularly winter squash, like banana squash. We love banana squash in many different forms--baked, mashed, made into "pumpkin pie" and pudding, etc.  We wanted to try some different types as well now that we had more room. We looked at different varieties--we didn't want Hubbard or Acorn squash since they are a pain to peel. Something fairly decent size with a smooth skin would fit the bill. We finally came up with those I mentioned earlier.

We also wanted to plant open pollinated seeds. Open pollinated seeds come from plants that haven't been genetically modified. Most seeds you buy today have been scientifically hybridized to get certain desirable features--larger yields, resistance to disease and insects, etc.

However, the seeds contained in the resultant fruit or vegetable often will not grow if you plant them. Or, they will throwback to one of the original plants, and not the hybrid. Lastly, some seeds actually have a patent on them, and you cannot legally save seeds from your planted crops for the next year!! A recent court case between Monsanto and a farmer that reused seeds ruled in favor of Monsanto--the farmer ended up paying an $84,000 fine.

Monsanto Wins in Seed Patent Case

So, to cut to the chase... we did some research and picked some additional types of squash to plant. Some of these links are to seed companies, etc., but I'm not compensated for including their links.

We bought most of our seed from Seedsaver's Exchange. They work to preserve heirloom, organically grown, and open-pollinated seeds. I don't get compensation from them for including the link, but I encourage you to take a look at their website and support them if you can.

Fordhook Acorn Squash

This squash is bigger than the traditional acorn and not as ridged...hopefully it will be easier to prepare.

Amish Crookneck Squash

The Amish Crookneck are unusual as well. (I'm not promoting this particular seed dealer, they just have good information about the squash)

Blue Guatemalan Banana Squash

I bought this just because I am intrigued by its color... We'll see how it does.

Silver Bell Squash

This came as a gift from Seedsaver's Exchange because I made a small donation... I'm interested to see what they taste like:


We also bought seeds for the "trombone squash" (Tromboncini) from another site. We will plant these at the house. It is a vine-type squash that has a long thin neck and a large bulge at the bottom. It is eaten as a summer squash, much like Zucchini, but if allowed to mature and "set" it turns a tan color similar to a butternut squash, and can be stored and eaten as a winter squash.  Here's a link:

Trombone Squash


Anyway, that's it for now... I'll keep you posted as things move along.

Smitty